Wunderground launches new Local Climate Change section

In honor of Earth Day on Sunday, wunderground has launched a new Climate Change Center, which gives people resources to understand how the climate is changing both globally and in their local neighborhoods. I am particularly pleased with our Local Climate Change feature, which allows one to see how temperature and precipitation have changed over the past 100+ years at the nearest station with a long period of measurements. Predictions from climate models on what the next 100 years may bring are overlaid for each station. Data for most U.S. stations goes back to 1895; we have data for a few stations in Europe that extend back to the 1700s. Berlin has the longest period of record in this database, with data back to 1702.

Figure 1. Screenshot of the Local Climate Change page for Washington, DC. Measured temperatures since 1820 are shown in grey. By clicking on the "Show post-1900 trend:" box, we see that the trend since 1900 has been for an increase in temperature of 1.5°C (2.7°F) per century. Moving the thin vertical red line over the image using the mouse shows that the warmest year on record in Washington D.C. was 1991. Predictions for a future with low emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are shown in yellow; the high emissions prediction is shown in red. Separate tabs are available to examine precipitation and snow.

Skeptical?Also included in the new Climate Change Center is a section addressing the common skeptical arguments made against climate change. We offer three levels of explanation. The "Basic" level is the default, but one can also see more technical in-depth discussions by clicking on the "See All Explanation Levels" link. The material was developed by physicist John Cook for his excellent skepticalscience.com web site, which is widely referenced in the climate science communication community.

Video 1. I'm featured in this video on extreme weather and climate change done by veteran videographer Peter Sinclair for the Yale forum on Climate Change and the Media this month. I'm also featured in Part 1 of this series. Our new Climate Change Center has a section for climate change videos, which includes a twice-monthly feature from GreenTV detailing the world's notable wild weather events of the past two weeks.

Earth: the Operator's Manual airs Sunday nightPenn State climate scientist Dr. Richard Alley hosts parts II and III of Earth: the Operator's Manual on PBS beginning at 7pm Sunday, April 22--Earth Day. Part I of this excellent series aired in April 2011. The series gives an overview of climate change, but primarily focuses on what we can do to help slow down climate change though smart energy choices. Dr. Alley, a registered Republican, geologist, and former oil company employee, is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, and one of the most respected and widely published world experts on climate change. Dr. Alley has testified before Congress on climate change issues, served as lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is author of more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Earth's climate. He is also the author of a book I highly recommend--The Two Mile Time Machine, a superb account of Earth's climate history as deduced from the 2-mile long Greenland ice cores. Dr. Alley is an excellent and engaging speaker, and I highly recommend listening to his 45-minute keynote speech, "The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History", given at the 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting, via this very watchable recording showing his slides as he speaks in one corner of the video. If you want to understand why scientists are so certain of the link between CO2 and Earth's climate, this is a must-see lecture.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll be back Monday with a new post. I'd like to thank Wunderground meteorologist, Angela Fritz for spearheading the creating the new Climate Change Center; it's a product I'll be referring to frequently in the future, and one we'll be updating in the coming months with data on local sea level rise, fire risk, and drought.

Quoting aspectre:And whether that particular idea is ever proven to be right or wrong, it'd be difficult to believe that a Texas-sized debris field floating on the Pacific would have no effect on the World's weather.

It's not like it's "Texas-sized" and solid. Similar to the garbage gyre in the Pacific. Terms are used to make it sound just massive, but it's not like this island of continuous material that is that large. I'd be very skeptical of such claims or hypotheses (it is erroneously called a theory) of tsunami debris causing the 2012 North American heatwave or even changing weather in a statistically significant way. Much more evidence would need to be presented, including putting this area of debris in context with previous known events, before this could become more than a very speculative, weakly substantiated hypothesis.

The Tehuano wind is a north to northeasterly wind which periodically blows across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. The wind is stronger than the trade winds which normally blow here.[citation needed] It is notable for causing a pronounced increase in upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich waters in the Gulf of Tehuantepec on the Pacific coast which in turn supports an abundance of sea life. The wind and upwelling are together referred to as a Tehuano event.

The Tehuano is caused by a surge of cooler, drier air originating from the North American continent. Such surges are more common in the winter, but may occur at other times of the year as well. This air is denser than the tropical air mass normally present in the region, thus a strong pressure gradient is established which induces the wind. The wind is further accelerated by the funneling effect of the Chivela Pass between the Bay of Campeche and the Pacific coastlines.[1] The same conditions are the cause of the Papagayo wind off the coast of Costa Rica and the Panama wind further south.Gulf of Tehuantepec (Spanish: Golfo de Tehuantepec) is a large body of water on the Pacific coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, southeastern Mexico, at 16°N 95°W. Most of the hurricanes that form in the Eastern Pacific organize in or near this body of water. A strong, gale force wind called the Tehuano periodically blows out over the waters of the Gulf of Tehuantepec, inducing strong upwelling of nutrient-rich waters which support abundant sea life.

1425 ClimateChange: I always considered Henry Margusity a bit of a goofball with his propensity to...invent pseudoscientific theories like the Japanese tsunami debris caused the March heatwave...

Tossing up the germ of an idea in hopes that the inevitable BS sessions that it'll land in will fertilize that seed into a working hypothesis is quite common. ie Sharing fact-based speculation is neither pseudoscientific nor is it the same as proposing a theory.And whether that particular idea is ever proven to be right or wrong, it'd be difficult to believe that a Texas-sized debris field floating on the Pacific would have no effect on the World's weather.A volleyball and soccerball found upon MiddletonIsland,Alaska are quite likely to be the first items to wash ashore in the US that've been sufficiently identified to be returned to their owner. DavidBaxter's wife, Yumi translated the text and contacted Misaki Murakami, who confirmed that he'd lost it.

Quoting BahaHurican:Well... just heard on the radio that there was some damage caused by our overnight storm on the eastern end of the island [New Providence]. People are claiming it was a tornado, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a downburst instead. Regardless, some people apparently lost their roofs.

Here we had extensive leaf and twig damage, and 1/2 dozen young mangos were downed.

Nice discussion of the March 30-31, 2003 event in the Gulf of Tehuantepec. The current event seems to be rather late occurring. Part of the description of that event:

"This was a late season event occurring six weeks after the last documented gale event in the area for the season. The time lag between significant wind events allowed the waters in the Gulf of Tehuantepec to recover from upwelling effects induced by the presence of such strong wind events. A 10 km resolution sea surface temperature (SST) analysis from the Naval Oceanographic Office on 27 March 2003 (Figure 2) indicated STET had reached 27-28C with a pool of greater than 29C water nearby. The potential then existed for winds at higher elevations to mix down to the surface due to the presence of an unstable boundary layer generated by the warm SSTs. In addition ambient surface pressures were 1 to 2-hPa lower in late March than they were in January and February. This effectively added to the potential pressure gradient across the Chivela Pass. Therefore, the potential for much stronger winds existed."

Quoting BahaHurican:Well... just heard on the radio that there was some damage caused by our overnight storm on the eastern end of the island [New Providence]. People are claiming it was a tornado, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a downburst instead. Regardless, some people apparently lost their roofs.

Here we had extensive leaf and twig damage, and 1/2 dozen young mangos were downed.